Family Planning Support - DRCongo

Impacts and objectives

This programme will accelerate progress toward the demographic dividend and Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. It will contribute to improved maternal and child health, reduced household poverty, slower population growth and greater resilience to climate change and reduced pressure on natural resources, including forests, and reduced greenhouse gas emissions.

The Programme seeks to contribute to an annual increase of 1.5 percent in the modern contraceptive prevalence rate in the target provinces by 2025, in support of reaching the national goal of 22.8 percent by 2024. To achieve this, the programme supports offering family planning services through health facilities, aims to increase the demand for modern contraceptive methods, and strengthens the health system by improving the monitoring and evaluation capacities of national and provincial health authorities.

Program goals and progress as of 31 May 2021

• 1,620,931 couple-years of protection have been provided, toward a final target of 6,400,000.
• In order to establish a functional referral system for women and men in need of services offered only at the health facility level, 7,517 providers have already been trained to offer family planning services at the community and health facility levels. 
• The program provides support to 146 health zones in 11 provinces (Kinshasa, Kongo Central, Kwilu, Haut Katanga, Tshopo, North Kivu, South Kivu, Bas-Uele, Ituri, Kasai-Oriental, and Lualaba), toward its final target of 193 and to expand family planning service service coverage to 90% of health areas
• The project has contributed to the installation of three permanent multi-sectoral technical committees for the repositioning of FP in DRC (CTMP) in Equateur, Mongala and South Ubangi. The process of installing the Mai-Ndombe and Kwilu CTMPs is expected to conclude in the second half of 2021.
• The project was presented to provincial health authorities and organizations involved in family planning (CTMP members) in 9 of the 11 program provinces, and in two PIREDD provinces (South Ubangi and Mongala).
• Support to health facilities is provided - the goal of ensuring that at least 80% will offer at least three different contraceptive methods and at least one long-acting method was reached met in 2021 (90%)
• The program aims to improve the population's knowledge of family planning methods by 20% compared to the 2013-2014 Demographic and Health Survey (DHS). To date, exposure to total FP messages has been estimated at 56% in Kinshasa and 33.6% in Kongo Central, compared to an average of 20% in 2019.
• Modern contraceptive prevalence rose in 2021 from 26 to  27.3% in Kinshasa and from 20 to 26.3% in Kongo Central in 2021.

Progress of this programme have also been described in the 2021 semestrial publication of the DRC National REDD+ Fund – read it here and here (in French).

Synergies and areas of intervention

• This programme is coordinated with two multi-sectoral programmes (known as PIREDD), covering the four provinces of Bas-Uele, Tshopo, Ituri and Kwilu.
• It supports demand creation activities in four other PIREDDs in Mai-Ndombe, Equateur, Sud-Ubangi and Mongala provinces.
• It covers seven additional provinces: Haut-Katanga, Kasai-Oriental, Kinshasa, Kongo Central, Lualaba, North Kivu and South Kivu.

This programme contributes to Objective 7 (demography) of the June 2017 Letter of Intent between the DRC and CAFI.

It supports the milestones for the implementation of the National Strategic Plan for FP, including in the PIREDD areas (milestone 2018 a), implementation of a consultation plan to create awareness among relevant FP partners (milestone 2018 b) and a national communication strategy on FP and women's education (milestone 2018 c). Two independent verifications of these milestones were undertaken (please read the report available here).